Online Program and Course Process, Policies, and Approval

INSERT: COPYRIGHT AND ACCESSIBILITY

Program and Course Approval

CLEAR offers a wide range of free instructional development and production services to UNT faculty for online and blended course creation and enhancement.

Request to Deliver an Online Program or Course

The Online Program Approval process applies to all programs (both new and existing) that will be offered more than 50% online. The Provost approves online UNT programs. This process is detailed in UNT Policy 06.030 Review and Approval of Online Courses and Programs.

Online courses for both new and existing programs may be developed while program approval is in process, and you are encouraged to work with CLEAR as early as possible to ensure that your courses are ready for delivery upon program approval.

Online Program Approval Process

Prepare a program proposal with the consultation of the CLEAR staff, your department chair, and your dean. As of Fall 2017, the forms linked below replace the following forms: VPAA-182, Request for UNT Planning Authority Form, Online CLEAR Program Proposal Form, and University Accreditation’s usage of the THECB Long Form. More information and budget form resources can be found here. Send your completed proposal to Elizabeth Vogt.

Course Review Process

Beginning in 2019, in accordance with the UNT Review and Approval of Online Courses and Programs Policy, every three years CLEAR will review your online course using standards provided by Quality Matters (QM), a non-profit, international organization that is recognized as a leader in quality assurance for online education. We use course reviews as an opportunity to assure consistency and quality in course design. CLEAR’s iteration of the QM Rubric provides a shared knowledge base and common language for administrators, faculty, instructional designers, and staff. Importantly, when we review your course, we will not assess your subject matter or your delivery of that subject matter; we will only assess design, or in other words, how course components align and contribute to the student learning experience.

Why Quality Matters?

From our course review rubric to the procedures we recommend for online course design, CLEAR anchors online delivery at UNT with best practices prescribed by Quality Matters (QM). All facets of QM’s quality assurance recommendations are grounded in peer-reviewed, academic research that are cultivated by a community of faculty and learning professionals in both K-12 and higher education.

In accordance with QM, UNT quality standards are based on “the insights of teams of experienced online instructors and instructional designers and on the best practices standards promulgated by accrediting bodies and national and international organizations. QM regularly undertakes a revision process to update the QM Rubric that includes input from the QM community, research about QM Course Reviews and a review of the current research literature.” Moreover, “the QM Standards have been examined for consistency with the conclusions of the educational research literature regarding factors that improve student learning and retention rates, as well as activities that increase learning and engagement.”
We encourage you to review the Quality Matters Standards for Higher Education.

In relation to the current process, you are undergoing to develop your online course, the QM tenets described in the above link heavily influence both overall course design and the course review process.

What the Review Process is Intended to Accomplish

Course Review Objectives & Outcomes: We are here in order to:

produce online courses that meet a consistent and respected quality threshold
improve student engagement/expectations through learning objectives/outcomes
promote ongoing faculty professional development through online pedagogy
improve student retention
produce a systematic, continuous quality assurance process that is aligned with the most recent best practices and quality standards

Misconceptions/Myth-Busting: We are NOT here in order to:

police/regulate your course content
create a series of cookie-cutter, homogeneous courses
prevent courses from being offered online through bureaucracy and red tape

If you have questions about the Course Review Project, please contact Dr. Rudi Thompson, 940-891-6713, rudi@unt.edu

National Council for State Authorization Reciprocity Agreements

UNT is a member of the National Council of Reciprocity Agreements (NC-SARA). The State Authorization Reciprocity Agreement is a voluntary agreement among its member states and U.S. territories that establishes comparable national standards for interstate offering of postsecondary distance-education courses and programs. It is intended to make it easier for students to take online courses offered by postsecondary institutions based in another state.

Please visit nc-sara.org for more information.

Funding and Fees

Out of State Teaching Fee

In Texas Education Code 54.545, the Texas Legislature ruled that courses taken by students that reside out of the State are self-supporting courses which do not qualify for formula funding. Students in these courses are charged an Out of State Teaching Fee in lieu of tuition and instructional fees. The UNT Board of Regents approved the use of an Out of State Teaching Fee. This fee must cover the cost of instruction, including overhead. This fee must be more than Texas resident tuition (including both state-mandated and board-designated portions) and applicable fees. Applicable fees are only those that are mandated by the University with the exception of the fees that students are exempt from if they are not taking any courses on campus. The applicable fees will automatically be calculated and no additional action is required by the department.

Eighty-three percent of the Out-of- State Teaching Fee is placed in a local account within the department and these funds may roll over into the next fiscal year. Colleges and schools may retain a portion of the funds for administrative overhead.

Every spring each academic department chair will be given the opportunity to choose one of four rates ($951, $1,152, $1,350, or $1,701 per 3 SCH) to apply at each level (undergraduate, master's, and doctoral) for the upcoming academic year. These selections are recorded in a Master Table for OSTF that Student Accounting will use to place the appropriate OSTF on those courses that will be identified in a report generated by the Registrar's Office on a regular basis. For assistance with the correct application of an OSTF, please contact Jason Curry in Student Financial Services at 940.565.3226 or jason.curry@unt.edu.

Processes and Policies

The University of North Texas is committed to addressing student concerns and complaints. The U.S. Department of Education requires institutions offering distance education to provide enrolled and prospective students the contact information to file complaints with the institution’s accrediting agency and with an appropriate state agency in the student’s home state.

A UNT student with a complaint should first follow the UNT complaint policy.

If UNT does not resolve the problem to the student’s satisfaction, the student may file a complaint with the designated agency in the state where they are receiving instruction or with UNT’s accrediting agency using the contact information provided below.

For Students within Texas:

Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board (THECB)
Please review the THECB’s student complaint process information prior to initiating contact.

For Students Enrolled in UNT Distance Education and Off-Campus Courses or Programs Outside of Texas:

Complaints should be filed in the state where the student is receiving instruction, not in the state in which the student resides. To view a list of the agency responsible for higher education and the student complaint process in each state, please visit: https://nc-sara.org/guide/agency-list

University of North Texas is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC) to award baccalaureate, masters, and doctorate degrees. Questions about the accreditation of the University of North Texas may be directed in writing to the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges at 1866 Southern Lane, Decatur, GA 30033-4097, by calling (404) 679-4500, or by using information available on SACSCOC’s website (www.sacscoc.org).

Scope

Canvas is the Learning Management System (LMS) provided as a service by Instructure, a third-party vendor, and administered by the University of North Texas (UNT or University) DSI CLEAR which is responsible for its implementation, daily operations, support, and security. This policy applies to all UNT faculty, staff, students, vendors, and others who use UNT’s implementation of the LMS for any purpose.

Privacy

UNT provides this written procedure for protecting the privacy of students in distance education courses or programs. In addition to the information provided below regarding the terms of privacy for the LMS, the University Acceptable Use Policy (14.003) and Privacy Policy (14.009) provide relevant information on protecting the privacy of all University students including those enrolled in distance education courses and programs.

Students are strongly encouraged to take measures to protect their privacy online. For example, when accessing UNT computing resources via a public computer, students should avoid saving passwords which might be easily viewable by subsequent users and clear the browser cache when a computing session is complete. General resources on topics such as passwords, securing workstations, and other security practices are located at the UNT System Information Security web site.

Restrictions on Use

The LMS and integrated technologies are funded by educational fees and thus are permitted to be used solely for the purpose of student education and administration of UNT courses (i.e. credit courses listed in EIS, new student orientation, placement tests, graduate student qualifying or comprehensive exams) from which those fees are generated. There are other options available for non-course related requests. All other requests must be approved by the Executive Director of Enterprise Systems or the Chief Information Officer. Your use of the LMS is also governed by Instructure’s Terms of Use.

Access

All University faculty, staff, and students are automatically provided accounts to access this LMS as soon as their employment and/or student application is officially completed. Due to potential FERPA, IT Security, intellectual property, and privacy policy violations, we are unable to provide LMS course access to non-UNT persons for instructional related activities. If you provide certification courses sponsored by the University to users not affiliated with the University, those non-UNT students must register for their courses via Canvas Catalog for an additional fee. Access may expire for faculty and staff immediately after the effective date of their termination per standard procedure regarding computing services. Student accounts expire in the LMS a minimum of one year after their separation from the university.

UNT Courses & Student Access

All UNT courses with at least one (1) student enrolled will automatically be populated in the LMS ninety (90) days prior to the start of each term. Instructors are added to courses as soon as they are listed as the instructor of record in EIS. Students enrolled in courses are uploaded one (1) week prior to the start of the term, will gain access to courses that are published by the instructor on the first day of the start of the term, and will retain access until one (1) week after the term ends unless the instructor has altered the course start and end dates in the course settings. Any student who drops or withdraws their enrollment from courses will be marked inactive in those respective courses.

Merging/Combining Courses

All requests to have multiple courses combined into one for the convenience of the instructor must be made prior to the start of the term to ensure student data integrity.

Responsibility for Content

Content that you create and upload to the LMS is subject to UNT intellectual property policies. You are responsible for complying with all federal and state laws, UNT Regent Rules, UNT Regulations, and UNT System and Institutional policies. Course materials may be used as intended by the instructors, otherwise you may not copy, sell, license, transfer, distribute, or otherwise use or exploit the LMS or any materials on the site other than your own content. Online and hybrid course materials must be approved by DSI CLEAR to ensure the content complies with all laws, regulations, rules, and policies. For more information about the online approval process, please visit the Online Course Development Services web page.

Student Data & Retention

The University requires all student-graded work be stored for one (1) calendar year after the end of the term as outlined in UNT Retention Policy 7.1.319. Other retention policies pertaining to information in the LMS with longer retention periods such as syllabi, content, and grade books (UNT Retention Policy 7.2.593 and 7.2.108) can be found at the UNT System Records Retention web site. Canvas courses are subject to deletion after the expiration of the retention period.

Third Party Tool Integrations

CLEAR supports multiple third party tool integrations within the LMS. These technologies can be found at the Approved and Supported Technologies web site. For a new technology to be integrated into the LMS, it first must go through several review processes, including IT compliance, accessibility, privacy, support resources, and cost.

Exceptions

Exceptions to these policy may be requested in writing to clearhelp@unt.edu, which will be forwarded to the Associate Vice Provost for DSI CLEAR for consideration.

Federal regulations state that students may apply only 3 fully-online semester credit hours (SCH) to the hours required for full-time status for F1 Visa holders. Full-time status for F1 Visa students is 12 hours for undergraduates and 9 hours for graduate students. Instructors teaching online courses should insert information into the syllabus to make F1 Visa students aware of this limitation and provide them with information about options to complete an on-campus experiential component in a course that is otherwise fully-online.

If a F-1 Visa holder intends to take more than 3 SCH of online courses in a term, they will need to document the on-campus experiential component of all courses that exceed the 3-hour limit. This on-campus experiential component can be satisfied in a number of ways including a face-to-face test, lab work, a required on-site lecture, mandatory library orientation, etc. Instructors should develop an option to assist students who request an on-campus experiential component to meet the federal regulation. Instructors should have students requesting this assistance to complete the On-campus Component Reporting Form for Online Courses which requires both the student and the instructor’s signature. The instructor should make a copy for the student’s departmental file and send a copy to the UNT International Student and Scholar Services (routing address on the form).

If you have any questions, please call the CLEAR Faculty Helpdesk at (940) 369-7394.

UNT encourages the development and use of high-quality online courseware, and safeguards the rights of authors and the University as detailed in UNT Policy 06.032 Online Courseware Intellectual Property. There are three categories of ownership and licensure for online courseware created at the University, based on the amount of support provided by UNT for developing those materials.

License Agreement Category A — Jointly Held. The work resulted from a combination of the author's efforts and University-provided resources, and the author shares the intellectual property with the University. Online courseware created by authors may include content produced by other individuals as works for hire or paid for by the University. The resulting work will be jointly owned by the author and the University based on the respective contributions. The author and the University each maintain a non-exclusive educational and commercial license. If licensed for commercial purposes either by the author or the University, the author and the University will split any royalty income evenly.
License Agreement Category B — University Held. An author is assigned to develop online courseware for the University as a work made for hire. The University provided the resources for the work which was carried out as a part of the author’s assigned time and duties. The University owns the intellectual property and owns exclusive educational and commercial licenses, unless otherwise negotiated.
License Agreement Category C — Use of Digital Publisher Content in an Online Course in lieu of an IP agreement. To be used in the instance that the course author or subsequent instructors of record will utilize materials that are authored by an academic publisher for online use. If the author has adopted a textbook or electronic learning bundle from a publisher, and intends to use pre-authored content from this publisher including, but not limited to lecture slides, videos, electronic textbooks, assignments, assessments or proprietary third-party learning/assessment tools that exceed 10% percent of the original material in the course, the author has elected to forfeit any intellectual property ownership of their course and the materials therein.

UNT takes measures to protect the integrity of educational credentials awarded to students enrolled in distance education courses by verifying student identity, protecting student privacy, and notifying students of any special meeting times/locations or additional charges associated with student identity verification in distance education courses.

See UNT Policy 07-002 Student Identity Verification, Privacy, and Notification and Distance Education Courses.

A student owns the copyright for all work (e.g. software, photographs, reports, presentations, and email postings) he or she creates within a class and the University is not entitled to use any student work without the student’s permission unless all of the following criteria are met:

The work is used only once.
The work is not used in its entirety.
Use of the work does not affect any potential profits from the work.
The student is not identified.
The work is identified as student work.

If the use of the work does not meet all of the above criteria, then the University office or department using the work must obtain the student’s written permission.

Download the UNT System Permission, Waiver and Release Form

No permission is needed from a student for his or her image or voice to be transmitted live via videoconference or streaming media, but all students should be informed when courses are to be conducted using either method of delivery.
In the event an instructor records student presentations, he or she must obtain permission from the student using a signed release in order to use the recording for future classes in accordance with the Use of Student-Created Work guidelines above.
Instructors who video-record their class lectures with the intention of re-using some or all of recordings for future class offerings must notify students on the course syllabus if students' images may appear on video. Instructors are also advised to provide accommodation for students who do not wish to appear in class recordings.

Example: This course employs lecture capture technology to record class sessions. Students may occasionally appear on video. The lecture recordings will be available to you for study purposes and may also be reused in future course offerings.

No notification is needed if only audio and slide capture is used or if the video only records the instructor's image. However, the instructor is encouraged to let students know the recordings will be available to them for study purposes.

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